#chwseventeen

[oliviadurai]

FAMILY CONNECTIONS:

OLIVIA inherited her last name from her mother, a practice that will continue with EVIE. #nonwhitefeminism

Grace is a stage actress, a profession in which Evie follows suit. Liv takes a detour and takes up her father’s career, lawyer and eventual judge. Their family is at a bit of a standstill at the moment; Grace’s husband has always dreamed of serving on the Second Circuit, but the political climate has brought those plans to a halt for the time being.

Grace is incredibly close to her daughter and always has been, despite those rocky high school years. She never had any other children, instead choosing to focus on her activism, which has been close to her heart since she was a teenager. That at least provided her more time to focus on Liv’s particular, ahem, issues.

RANDOM FACTS:

Think Judith Light. Feminist badass, killer activist, Tony winner. That’s Grace.

Grace has always been kind, but she has a wild streak in her, and a certain darkness that is well hidden and maintained through self-care but has never gone away. In her business, she’s seen a lot of people die — and though that staved off a long time ago, she’s constantly surrounded by ghosts.

Is very firmly an atheist. Blame her parents. She married a Muslim, but Liv ended up not ascribing to any religion either.

Liv has no complaints about her family, and for good reason. Grace loves her husband and always will. She’s content, save for wishing that she had more kids from time to time. These past few years, she’s taken a liking to TWO-BIT, but she tries not to be invasive since, y’know, he has a mother. But she looks out for him when she can. He reminds her of her brother, who died when she was young.

[cecilylisbons-blog]

FAMILY CONNECTIONS:

Every myth begins somewhere, and Noeul is the original Lisbon girl. She’d never admit it, though. And she’d never admit that her scandals are much larger than the ones her daughters have caused — that she left her home because of them. That she changed her name and became someone else. And became what she once hated.

Noeul was most similar to NOVA, but had MARINA’s magnetism ( but knew how to use it ) and TESSA’s penchant for a more dangerous kind of recklessness ( but never admitted to it ). CECILY and BRIDGET are, in many ways, the black sheep of the family because they don’t display most of their mother’s traits. Cecily’s daughter HOLLY ultimately assumes her place as Noeul’s second (teenage) coming because, ahem, history repeats itself.

RANDOM FACTS:

Her former aesthetic is a Wong Kar Wai flick. Or, for a brief course, the Yes No Maybe video. (No, she didn’t kill anyone.)

Is majorly uncomfortable about being a teenager again. It reminds her of her past screwups that she’s spent the whole rest of her life trying to hide. So, she’s hiding from her husband and her daughters. Yikes.

No one knows her birth name, and if they do, they know well enough not to use it. Call her by her weird, corny, Christian name, pls.

Has become a major Jesus freak with a cold, dead heart. But she wasn’t always that way, oh no no no.

Noeul starts the story that maps out the revamped The Virgin Suicides. Shit’s gonna get wild, fam.

[penn-choi]

A Good Guy, known by all, loved by... most. As long as you’re not a criminal, I guess. His claim to fame is that he was almost in a boyband, but passed the opportunity up to follow a more sensible path and become a family man, police officer, and eventually Rosewood’s sheriff instead. Still, he never really lets anyone forget what could have been-- he is 100% where Penn’s goofiness comes from, though he's a little more reserved than his son. Either way, bless Penn’s mum for putting up with these two losers tbh.

[p-finch]

“It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative - whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.” - Sylvia Plath

About Allison:

For most of her life, Allison wanted to travel the world. She wanted to be a nomad and a writer who’s fiction would capture people’s hearts as her favorite writers had done for her. 

Unbeknownst to Percy, his mother was quite the wandering spirit, always finding herself in someone else's bed, on some new adventure, welcoming whatever came into her world, man or women, it didn’t really matter much to her. 

Liam had been a game changer. The complete opposite of her, she had been capture by his charm and wit, his willingness to learn more about her and be in her world. He was persistent to say the least and while she wanted to continue to spread her wings, getting pregnant with Percy had put a stop to her plans and before she knew it she was a housewife and the wife of someone she had come to resent. 

Allison is hoping that he chance to be young again will allow her to live out some of the moments she had been dreaming of, without her husbands watchful eye. 

“If you aren't going all the way, why go at all?” -  Joe Namath

About Liam:

An all American Golden Boy, Liam Finch never knew much outside of football and family. He had one goal in mind: Make it to the NFL. It was a goal his father could never amount to and one that he actually had a chance at. He had shone bright in high school, making the papers, flirting with all the girls and making a real name for himself. 

A real mans man, Liam had never imagined his one weakness being Allison. She was unlike anyone he had met and she looked for something deeper in him and ignited a greater sense and need for adventure. 

Getting Allison pregnant had not been part of the plan but there was no way he could go off to college and support his family. So he stayed back, gave up his dream and helped Allison raise a son that seemed to have no aspiration to be anything like him. He became angry and resentful and it led to him taking it out on his son. 

It’s been months since he last saw Percy and there hasn’t been a moment where he hasn’t fought with Allison about it or wondered to himself how he ended up so bitter and judgemental. Maybe being young again will give him the chance to see his son’s side of things and find out just how much the world has changed. 

[l-jackson]

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” - Maya Angelou

About Misty: 

If there are three things Misty Bryant loves it’s her children, God and her late husband. Being a widow and a struggling mother of four had never been her ideal but it was the hand she was dealt. As a young girl she had put herself on a path to be an english professor, reading every book she could find, always writing down her thoughts. That was until she met Keith Jackson.

Her love for Keith was unlike anything she had never known before and suddenly every poem had that much more meaning and she was deep in it. She never cared for what he did as long as he came home at the end of the day and he was safe. 

His death was the greatest heartbreak she ever suffered but she knew that she had to keep it together for her children, to raise them to be better and stronger than she and Keith ever were. 

Now a middle school teacher, Misty made it halfway to her dream and although her aspirations changed, she’s fairly settled with where he life is. 

Waking up in her younger body is something she’s still adjusting to. Mostly, it comes with too much baggage, too many memories of the past but maybe this time around she’ll get to do things a little differently. 

[jasper-hutchinson]

“Money may not buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.” ― Françoise Sagan

About Piper: 

As a young girl, Piper had aspirations to be in the fashion world. She was always begging her mother to get her clothes they could never afford and she grew up with the belief that one day she would be able to provide herself with all the things she grew up without. Those plans changed when she found it was easier to seduce men and take their money than make some of her own. 

Piper is aware that she could have been a better mother, that Jasper somehow ended up okay despite her mess of a life. It’s not that she doesn’t care for her son, it’s just that she never expected him and he put a serious wrench in her plans. 

Waking up in her younger body just meant more opportunities and now that she’s just finished finalizing the papers for divorce number five, she’s ready to find husband number six. 

[junonam]

FAMILY CONNECTIONS:

JUNO was not a band-aid baby. She didn’t come into a relationship that was strong enough to begin with for that to be the case. Veronica was relatively young, in a young marriage, and she resented having to become a mother at her age. But it was what was proper for people of her stature. She was the girl of the family, and that was her job. Juno was able to carry on the family name, at least — Veronica married well, but it was difficult to find a family more politically prominent than hers, and so her surname won out.

Veronica was the only one with political aspirations. Her husband was in finance. Juno ended up being a documentary journalist. It didn’t seem like an appealing path, and so Juno never thought about it — not with how it kept her mother up at night, tossing and turning.

Marriage was a formality for the Van Der Bilts. Veronica’s was practically arranged. So while Juno was devastated when her father disappeared, Veronica couldn’t have given less of a shit. In fact, it felt rather rejuvenating. This was going to be her moment now. And so she focused on herself. So, really, it wasn’t all that surprising that Juno turned out the way that she did. But she tried to warn them that she wasn’t cut out for motherhood. Hell, she couldn’t even pull far enough away from her one-track mind to care for her granddaughter.

RANDOM FACTS:

Veronica is very much Mellie Grant from Scandal. She’s the cunning one, the smartest member of her family — and her husband’s family — and the most capable person in the room at all times. But no one ever notices.

She’s Harvard educated, and she’ll tell you so if she feels the need to assert her intelligence. And she’ll tell you quickly.

She has an obsessive need to assert herself and not allow herself to be disrespected. She’s spent so much of her life being made small — not anymore.

When she was seventeen, she was hardly allowed to be her own person. But hell, now she’s single, without any baggage — Juno has always taken care of herself — and back in her prime. She’s taking advantage.

[janmaddox-blog]

FAMILY CONNECTIONS:

Holy hot mess. LET’S BEGIN.

JANUARY was born under troubling circumstances; when May was fifteen, she fell in love with a man who was way too old for her (and a perv, lbr). A teacher. He was also married. So, when she wound up pregnant, she convinced herself that he would stop ignoring her and come around when he saw how beautiful his daughter turned out to be. That didn’t happen, obviously, because she sure as hell wouldn’t be the person she is now. She’d be a different kind of fucked up.

All avenues were going to end in fucked up for May Maddox, who was born into a family of means that went crazy one by one, as if it were a curse. She once thought she was going to be the one who beat it, who didn’t burn through the money — who didn’t collect stray cats and let them roam around the house. Then she got her heart broken and became the town embarrassment, a little girl who falls in love and never learns. So she hid away, paranoid that people would laugh at her for the rest of her life. And when January found it in her to leave, she had other kids to fill the void, lest she be left with just her sister.

RANDOM FACTS:

Before she dropped out of school and had January, she was eerily like her — sneaking out to sing at bars and aspiring to be something great. In fact, the teacher who manipulated her was her music teacher. So she doesn’t sing anymore.

She had January when she was sixteen, so maybe there were a few bumps in the road allowed. But now she’s an actual adult with two more children on her hands, and absolutely no idea what to do with them. But she loves them, and she needs them. And she hopes they don’t turn out like her.

Break Point is in no way a healthy place to live, and she knows it. The house is falling apart. But she remembers when it used to be a grand display of her family’s prominence, and she deludes herself into thinking that she can return it to that former glory. When CPS or other inspectors come, she turns on the Maddox charm she also inherited with the madness. She keeps her home.

When she woke up this way, surprisingly, her first thought was to go outside. See the world again. She almost forgot how beautiful she once was. What promise her eyes held. And she looks nothing like one of those old, crazy bats who lives in the house that’s an ugly stain on the richest road in Rosewood. She’s taking advantage of the moment — a moment that in her eyes may go on forever. Maybe she can have a do over.